From Dust to Gold: an Elder Scrolls Epic
by vaeisbae
Summary: Following my OCs Vaelena and Carmiene through the third, fourth, and fifth eras and the events that would change Tamriel forever. This is how I envision the events of ES III, IV, and V (all worlds). Original dialogue intact with some liberties where the games are silent. No smut or profanity. Rated T for violence, intense psychology, innuendo, and disturbing descriptions of gore.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the Elder Scrolls series; Vaelena and Carmiene are my OC's. Bethesda Softworks owns all rights to the Elder Scrolls I-V. Big thank you to the Imperial Library and the Elder Scrolls Wiki for double-checks on lore and history. Feel free to correct me on improperly used lore, feedback is encouraged and appreciated!

The Elder Scrolls

Imperial City Talos Plaza District, 5 Heartfire 5E 354

Vaelena cursed the day, the stars, and the vow she had made to return to the gods-forsaken city that had stolen so much of her life. She pulled her dark cowl tighter around her hair, and the safety of the shadow it cast across her face amplified the feeling of security provided by her illusion magics and the waning light of the sinking sun. This was the last place on Nirn she wished to be recognized.

The Aldmeri had long ago claimed their birthright as heirs to the beauty and wealth of Tamriel, and had with that claim put the lesser races in their place as the invaders of their beautiful continent. The Ayleid graces shined upon their gleaming white city built around the ruins of what the Altmer called the "Old City," the remains of the rings the Imperials had constructed around the glorious White-Gold Tower, which preceded the Imperial City by thousands of years. The Old City existed as the New City's slums, home to the stubborn Imperials and Bretons who staunchly refused to give up on the dream of one day reclaiming Tamriel as their own and to the poor who could not afford to live elsewhere.

Gazing about her, memories flooded her consciousness, flashes of scenes she had struggled for two eras to forget. She knew she would not sleep within the decaying, crumbling walls overwhelmed by vines. She looked up at the star-studded sky she had once seen molten and menacing, and cursed her vows audibly.

When she reached the Hotel, she sighed. The Tiber Septim was, in its hey-day, the premier place to find lodging in the City, and she had made many visits to the high-brow Imperial hierarchy there in past eras. She smiled, her white teeth glowing in the light of the moons, and thought that its appearance finally matched its true value.

The door groaned, its rusting hinges pained by the weight of the ancient Second-Era birch and cast-iron door. The barmaid, a blonde Imperial garbed in a moth-eaten brocade-and-silk from the Imperial Golden Age, greeted her with the dripping sweetness of a shopkeeper who seldom saw a customer with legitimate capital. Vaelena pulled the hood tighter around her head, concentrating her illusions around her face, though she would never hide the glory of her golden skin.

"Welcome to the Tiber Septim Hotel," the woman said cheerfully, her crooked, yellowed teeth fully visible in a wide grin. She raised the battered mug she was wiping out with a greasy old piece of linen that looked as if it had once been clothing. "It is good to see someone of more discerning tastes in the finest hotel in the Empire. These elves may have the land now, but Talos will rise again!"

Vaelena turned toward her, and the swirling and twitching illusions of her golden face gave the barmaid's pallor an eerie glow. With a toss of hood and a conscious removal of her magicka-fueled disguise, she faced the woman with a menacing glare.

"You know nothing of the glorious Empire of which you speak, mortal. Your ignorance betrays you."

Stunned into utter silence, the woman stood motionless except for the release of both dishcloth and mug from now-limp fingers.

"You're- you're- you're-"she stammered helplessly, her words punctuated with the thud of the mug on the cracked stone floor.

"Oh, do finish, and stop stuttering, for I have been in the midst of a great identity crisis of late and would love assistance regarding that matter."

As if she had not spoken, the Imperial bowed to the ground and began the Altmer display of obeisance, and Vaelena thought that lightning might strike the White-Gold Tower if she cursed her stars one more time. She sighed as she focused her magicka once more toward her face.

"My Lady, our wonderful Commonwealth is more beautiful than— "she began, her voice trembling on every syllable.

"Do us both a favor, Imperial. Stop while you're ahead."

Dumbfounded, the woman eventually rose to her feet and nodded. "Would you care for any food or drink?" she queried, her voice faint.

"Flin, in this mug. Hot. Keep it full and you will not hear my voice again." Vaelena produced an ornate mug made of a strange orange-colored metal that had no luster, but had no rust either.

"Very good, ma'am." The Imperial whistled the former Imperial Anthem while she worked, and Vaelena could not conceal the reflexive scowl that marred her otherwise perfect features. She settled deeper into the wing-backed chair, her thoughts murderous and unpleasant, knowing she would not sleep nor even so much as rest in this accursed city. She was just imagining what the Imperial woman would look like inside out and spread across the walls as a tapestry when the front door cried out the second time. The air began to hum excitedly, and the energy in the room surged and swelled with the entrance of a tall personage garbed in a black robe not unlike her own.

Vaelena rose to greet her company, and when she turned, the hooded figure bowed.

"What theatrics you love, Ondolemar. I see the years have only added to the melodrama," Vae waved her arms wide and bent from her hips in a stage-bow. "You have missed your calling. You would make a far better actor than the ruler of an Empire."

The figure removed its hood, revealing an aristocratic brow, a dazzling smile, and the aura of royalty.

"Up to the same old tricks, I see," he responded in kind, nodding to her robe and the aggressive prickling of the afterburn of her magicka consumption. He could see right through the swirling and twitching confusion hiding her face.

"You like being hailed and worshipped, my liege, and I do not," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "Have you forgotten our agreement? Do you have them with you?"

"I am aghast that you could so easily doubt my character. Of course I remember what I promised, and since you have kept your end of our deal, I shall keep mine," he replied in a clipped tone that belied his false sarcasm and showed his hurt.

"To be Emperor, one must be conniving and deceitful."

"To win a war, a hero must sacrifice the good of individuals to the good of all," he responded immediately. "Are we here to discuss why we parted, or are we here to execute this business? I grow weary of this useless chatter. I do that at court and do not wish to do it in my leisure time."

"Show them to me, Ondolemar. You know how I have longed to see them," she said beseechingly.

He closed his eyes, and the air seemed to take on an impossible amount of life, and then suddenly froze; two more figures appeared on either side of Ondolemar, their faces as gold and fine as his, except they carried an ethereal glow about them, as if magicka ran through their veins instead of blood. Two pairs of perfect, amber eyes were transfixed on her face, and Vaelena felt as if they could see into her very soul.

"Marvelous," she whispered. "Truly."

"These are my children," he said softly, gesturing to each of his sides. "My son, heir to the throne of the mighty Aldmeri Commonwealth Empire, and my daughter, the crown jewel and rose of our people."

"I am Braelin, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Aldmeri Commission of the Elder Council of Tamriel," the young man, barely of age, bowed gracefully, a trained smile appearing on his flawless face.

"I am Ilinalta, Princess and Royal Minister of War and Foreign Affairs," the girl curtsied sweetly, her small frame dipping low.

"I am the handmaiden of your late mother," Vaelena said quietly.

"We never knew her," they said in unison. "Will you please tell us her story?"

"It will take weeks to tell it all."

"They have waited decades, Vaelena. Tell them of their mother," Ondolemar commanded quietly, his eyes fixed squarely on her own.

Vaelena sighed. The last thing she desired to spend her remaining time doing was reliving those awful centuries of injustice, bloodshed, cowardice, and tyranny. She'd made that promise in the bed of love, and for decades she regretted it while she shivered in her self-made isolation. Her own tarnished honor bound her to her word as roots bind life to the ground.

"As the law, the story begins where all stories begin, with the homeland…"

Mayor's Manor, Balineri, Summerset Isle, 5 Frostfall 3E432

"Carmiene! If you do not learn the value of haste in the next five minutes, Father will have our hides and they shall be his next suit of ceremonial leather armor!" her brother whined at the base of the staircase. His pleading tones echoed through the manse, the high ceilings and central dome amplifying the sound.

"You shall not expire if I take a moment more!" She pulled her hair into its token style, her elaborate braid fastened to her head in many twists and turns at the back of her head. She applied bright red lipstick to her golden lips, and pinned orchids and lavender onto her pink kimono.

"If you do not come down, I will leave you behind," he called impatiently, and his waning footsteps corroborated his declaration.

A wicked smile flashed across her youthful face, and with one last passing glance at her reflection, she ran out into the hall, grabbing the railing and jumping from the third floor with a whoop. As she fell, the dismay and shock on her brother's face made her grin all the wider. With a flash of purple light, she landed gracefully on her feet, and her brother's face contorted with rage.

"Magicka is a gift to be treasured, not a talent to be abused," Quaranir spat.

"And that blind acceptance of authority and strict adherence to unquestioned rules is precisely why you will never surpass me as a mage," cried Carmiene haughtily. "You never have any fun. What use is an ability you cannot enjoy?"

Quaranir smiled wanly in spite of himself, his anger fading. "I am too busy learning to be the future mayor to have fun. Duty before pleasure."

"Then let go for one night, Quaranir, and just be an Altmer at a party instead of mayor-elect!" Carmiene smiled tenderly at her big brother. "Mother would have been proud this night, you know. Celebrate her memory and enjoy your stupid party!"

"I believe I shall. Let us go, and have the night we shall never forget!"

He took his sister's hand, pulling her out the door and down the street, laughing and cheering into the flower-scented dusk toward city hall. The time had come for her brother to succeed her father as mayor of Balineri, in keeping with ancient Ayleid tradition. Braelin had served for five hundred years as mayor, and her older brother being the firstborn, very young at fifty, was to take his place and resume the duties for another five hundred years.

Quaranir treated his calling as a prestigious honor, one to be taken seriously, for in it was his future and livelihood. Carmiene looked at Quaranir's obligations and wished some higher, more free calling, one that would afford her the opportunity to see the world, to come and go from the Isle as she listed. She held the high hopes that her talents in the varying schools of magicka would carry her to faraway lands and to immeasurable adventure.

She felt sorry for her brother, knowing he had once dreamt misty, lofty dreams of his own, namely that he would be called to the Psijic Order. He had wanted Artaeum and the purity of Altmer magic from the time he could talk, and his life had led to the mayorship of an unimportant, unrecognized town on the southwestern end of the Isle that would require five hundred of the best years of his life, provided he lived any longer.

But she would not feel sorry this night, no, not for her brother, herself, or anyone else. Tonight was the night she would dance, sing, indulge in the many delicacies prepared, and display her beauty and talent to those who had never before laid eyes on the young woman she had become. She was no longer a little girl; she had come of age, and to her, this was her ushering in to the society that would open the doors to the rest of Tamriel. She must make an unforgettable impression.

Her head tilted higher, her hand clasped Quaranir's tighter, her steps quickened, and though her body flew down the streets of Balineri, her heart soared high above it all, her dreams lifting her aloft to see the bright and beautiful future she had so longed for. The smile she wore from the joy of her brother's elated presence and the exertion was consecrated by the richness of ambition and the fullness of hope, crowning her brow with an ethereal glow that no magic could bestow. Though her brother was the cause of the festivities, this was Carmiene's night. Every bone in her body vibrated with excitement.

They reached the hall just as the party went into full swing; their large banquet hall was decked with tapestries of the finest velvet and brocade, the purest silver candelabras, and extravagant foods paired with the finest regional liquors. The Balineri town guard were arrayed not in their usual tunics, but in Imperial plate and chain. It was all much finer than what Carmiene had imagined; Quaranir even felt some suspicion. Something must have gone terribly awry for this to be real.

"What do they mean by all this?" he whispered, his eyes flitting from his sister's face and the lush decadence surrounding them.

"I am not sure," Carmiene muttered, distrustful of the glaring brilliance coming from every angle. "This is all too much for a simple inauguration. No offense," she added after seeing the appalled look on her older sibling's handsome face.

"We must find father."

"Agreed."

Rushing to the inner ballroom of the banquet hall, hand in hand, the two stopped abruptly at the door, which was slightly ajar. Their father was shaking hands with an important-looking, rotund Imperial in lavish dress, both wearing tense smiles and murderous glares. The city guards were distinguishable from the Imperial guards only by their golden complexions and ominous expressions, and the room was devoid of any revelers. This was a private meeting, where great pains had been taken to conceal the matter at hand.

"You see, we are here on an errand from Emperor Uriel Septim VII, Dragonborn Emperor and heir of Talos," the ambassador's pompous accent intoned, "and we seek only to retrieve that which he has required of this people."

"We have paid our allotted tax amounts every year," Braelin offered, his congenial demeanor alight with panic.

"If gold were His Highness' goal, we would have gone to Alinor and spoken to Herself," the man replied, his prodigious girth shaking with each rumble of his haughty laughter. "We seek a certain individual, born on a certain day under a certain sign. That person will be transported to the Imperial City under guard to be introduced to the Emperor Himself. It is a very simple errand."

"But it must not be so simple, sir, for if it were so you would have simply taken that person from their home and transported them elsewhere. What I do not understand is why you need to involve me, if your task is supposedly so cut and dry," her father said amiably, though she could hear the anxiety in his tight tone.

Carmiene shifted uneasily. The only reason they would speak to the mayor would be—

"We seek a child born under the sign of the Mage."

Carmiene exhaled a breath in relief. Many Altmer children were purposefully conceived to be born under the Mage sign, especially in Balineri. That was not at all uncommon; the Imperial could be here for half of the town, including her entire family.

"You may have your pick of them, for nearly half of the residents in our humble town were born so. You have the Emperor's command, so do as you have been bidden. You need not involve me in your affair," Braelin said dismissively with a wave of his hand, though his strained voice said otherwise.

The Imperial's eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. "Only one can fulfill His Majesty's requirement. This is a high honor, one any Altmer from a backwater town such as this would be thankful for. You know for whom we have come. You know the stories."

"You will not take my daughter without bloodshed," her father said, his hands slamming the mahogany table. "You have only a few moments before battlemages arrive to turn you to dust."

"Take her," the Imperial ordered, gathering his sweeping crimson velvet cloak behind him. He pulled a cuff from a pocket inside his silk vest, opening it with a sharp, tinny click. Swords were drawn and poised to strike, shields raised to parry. Her father's bared teeth glinted in the light of his glowing aura, and just as he lifted his hand to let off a fiery bolt of magicka, Carmiene burst through the door.

"I will go!"

"Carmiene-!"

"No, my daughter, this spells only certain doom!" her father pleaded. "These men mean only to dump you into the hands of the Empire for a bounty, and you will end up imprisoned until they decide what to do with you!" The blades of fire lengthened as his focus attuned.

"I will go," she repeated, quietly this time. "Father, call off the mages, send the guard away, I will go with this man to see the Emperor. This is my chance, and I will take it, no matter the cost."

"Bid your daughter goodbye, Braelin. We will leave as soon as she can prepare her things."

Braelin's hands fell to his sides. Her brother's firm jaw went slack and his mouth fell open. Carmiene knew what she had done. She had defied her father and turned her back on her family as soon as she assented to go. She expected no parting sentiments, and she was given none. She turned to face her father, whose features wore only exhaustion and disappointment.

"I cannot save my daughter from a fate she so desperately wishes to meet. She has chosen a path not laid out for her by her people. She is a traitor to her home and to me; I have nothing to say to such an individual. Azura save you, my child, for I will not." His words were bitter. Carmiene expected no less from her proud father.

"Carmiene, how could you?" Quaranir's voice shook and died, tears freely falling from his eyes.

"If I stayed, they would send their armies, and everything I care about would be destroyed. My life for yours, brother, and gladly. Maybe my father will see that before he meets Auri-El," Carmiene whispered.

The Imperial wrapped his fat paw around her thin wrist and clamped the cuff around it. Immediately Carmiene felt as if her magicka had just begun dripping from her body, and a weary sensation pervaded her senses. Her very natural force began to abate, and she sank to her knees, exhausted. The guards picked her up, and she leaned her head against the nearest breastplate, and thought no more.


	2. Chapter 2

the elder scrolls

Chapter 2

Imperial City Prison, Cyrodiil, 2 Last Seed 3E433

When Carmiene woke the first time, she did so in a cold sweat to an ache encompassing her entire body, throbbing in cadence with her rapid heartbeat. She could not remember where she was nor how she came to be there; her head smarted with each attempt to recall the journey. She knew she had come many miles to rest in this awful place, but did not know why she had been taken at all, except that she was born under the sign of the Mage.

Eventually, when she overheard guards talking, she realized she was imprisoned somewhere in the Imperial City. The cells were underground, which was what made them so fearfully dark and damp. Her wrists had been bound in the iron cuffs for long enough that she developed callouses where the restraints met her skin. She had lost what little padding her figure held months before; her rations were cloudy water and moldy bread upon sight of which made her wretch. The guards had long since stopped delivering it. The sand in the bottom of her cell was matted to her hair and ground into her face.

Thus she spent the span of her indefinite sentence, contemplating why she was there, because no one offered any sort of explanation. The guards did not speak to prisoners unless they were being beaten, and those words had more to do with the superiority of that guard's anatomy to that of the person they were striking. The closest she could come to any viable conclusion was that she, for some reason, should not exist, and that her presence on Nirn was not to be tolerated or even snuffed out for fear of some reincarnation. She was past making sense, and she no longer truly cared.

And what profit would it be if she knew, anyway? She didn't think for even an instant that they would let her go. She had no hope of escape, for she didn't have the strength to even cry when the Imperials beat her. They had stopped that, too, since she no longer screamed from the slash of the whip or the bludgeoning of their clubs. She had started hearing whispers when they walked by her cell. Would she die soon? She clung to that wish with every bit of energy she had left. She thought that if she willed her life to leave her body, it might.

The familiar echo of metal clanking against the rugged stone floor of the hallway soothed Carmiene's troubled consciousness. She felt herself tip to the edge of the void as the footfalls drew closer and seemed to stop before her. A shadow was cast over her limp body, though she could not so much as open her eyes to see who was before her. She thought maybe it was Death coming to carry her away, that her Maker had finally answered her pleas. She realized she truly was being carried away to somewhere, but she felt nothing but the gradual warming of the air blowing against her thawing skin.

 _The light and favor of the living God,_ she mused, the sensation wonderful to her deprived senses. The metal she was pressed against began to radiate her body heat, warming her further. Doors opened and shut, voices rumbled vaguely as they moved, but the footfalls never varied in frequency or in length of stride. Carmiene rocked to and fro, giving herself to its cadence.

Her peaceful reverie was broken by the creaking of hinges and an accompanying burst of impossibly bright, pleasantly warm light.

 _I_ must _have died,_ Carmiene thought happily, and strained to open her eyes. She squinted in the overwhelming rays, trying desperately to get a good look at her whereabouts. Ver vision began to clear, and her eyes fixed on a single white stone spire, the sun at its apex, rising far above the rounded walls. Deciduous trees were scattered about, and the grass was a mat under her carrier's plated feet. She turned her gaze to his face, which was classically Imperial, shrouded in a strange black metal helmet, and well-aged, but when his eyes met hers, she sensed an otherworldly presence in his ocean-blue irises that unsettled her.

"You're awake," he observed, smiling gently.

"I am," Carmiene croaked, her voice tight and strange after not having spoken intelligibly for months. "Who are you?" she queried to the golden dragon on his dark metallic breastplate.

"I am your friend," said the man with the kind eyes. "That is all that is important now. I am sorry for what has happened to you. It was not under my direction that you were treated so, but I can only hope that it will somehow benefit you or someone you encounter in your travels." He had a kind voice, too, though to her weary ears, it sounded sad. He attempted to pull her matted locks away from her dirty face, to no avail.

"Why did you lock me up? What did I do?" Her words were punctuated by the whinny of a horse she must have missed in her quick survey of her surroundings.

His snowy eyebrows crinkled as the corners of his puffy, wrinkled lips turned ever-so-slightly upward into another sad, sweet smile. "Your purpose will be known in due time, my child. You will do well. For now, rest. Eat. Grow. Regain your strength. You will surely need it. The strength and glory of the Empire is with you. Go in peace, and conquer your enemies."

"Enemies…?" she asked as she was passed into the hands of another and laid on a pallet in a closed carriage. He said nothing more, and she found she could not pull her eyes away from the ones colored the same as the waves surely breaking over the shores of Balineri that very moment. He nodded toward her, turned on his heel, and marched away, his ebony and gold armor glinting in the afternoon rays.

She looked at her bruised skin, her protruding bones, the filth smeared into her sack-cloth tunic, and back at the men in shining armor, standing about the carriage as it pulled away, who were talking, laughing, and shoving one another in jest.

 _The strength and glory of these Imperials and their wretched Empire is nothing more than the keening cry of the people they hate and oppress to better themselves,_ Carmiene thought blasphemously, her mouth twisting into a mad contortion comparable only to that of a predator's snarl. _What victory treats the common man as expendable when it is he who truly builds such an Empire?_ Her ire rose, and she beat upon the sliding glass window between her and her captors. The driver's companion, an officer of the Imperial Watch, nudged the portal open.

"Oi! Where are you devils taking me?" she demanded.

"You're bound for Vvardenfell. That's Morrowind, sweetheart. I hope you like ash in your kwama eggs, my friend, for that's your life now!" the Watchman howled, his laughter echoing through the glen like booming, mocking thunder. "I did four years on the island. Seyda Neen, the port you're headed to. Swamps and wastelands and wild men who live in giant bug shells! Not quite the civilized, cultured folk you're used to, stranger!"

"Vvardenfell…" she whispered to herself, turning to face the back of the carriage once more. Her freedom lay in the shadow of the fires of Red Mountain.

County Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil, 3 Last Seed 433

Carmiene stretched her aching body. She had ridden all day in that blasted carriage and slept on the unforgiving ground that night. She had risen early, partly from the need to relieve herself, and partly from the desire to rid her clothes and body of the filth she lived in in prison. She spotted the creek near the campsite, and longed to feel the fresh, clear water on her skin.

As she bathed, she gazed over the dry, gray hillside at the settlements below, Cheydinhal in the immediate distance, with the White-Gold Tower, as she now knew it was called, jutting into the sky from within the interlocking wheels of the City. Though Cheydinhal was closer, the Imperial capital still looked as if it could swallow three of the smaller towns.

Beating her clothes against the rocks, she sighed. Though this land was so picturesque it could have been a vivid painting, it was not her native shore, for which she desperately longed. But having no money, no titles, and no contacts, she would be shipped to a land of bogs and strange creatures the likes of which were hailed as monsters in the other Provinces. She shook her head, water droplets radiating from her golden tresses. The chink of metal plates broke into her thoughts, a hidden dam breaking in her heart that made way for the dread filling her mind.

 _I have an audience._ Turning slowly, her suspicions were confirmed as she laid eyes on her escort, both of whom were ogling her and jeering. She hastily snatched her wet garments and clutched them to her chest as she dashed for the nearest clump of brush. She dressed to the sound of raucous laughter and the clanking of metal as one punched the other with his plated fist.

 _Entitlement. They think they have the right._ The red blood in her veins began to seethe, her ire rising to new heights. Her skin burned with the fierceness of her anger and her fingers tingled with an almost electric quality. Her face twisted into an angry mask of hate and shame.

"How dare you," she declared in a low voice. The Watchmen laughed harder, slapping one another on the rump, mocking.

"What's that you say?'

"I'm not sure you're speaking Aldmeris!"

An inaudible snap succeeded their gestures, which increased in rudeness and vulgarity as rage changed the hues of her face from gold, to pink, to red, and finally purple.

"How _dare_ you!" she screamed, her vision fading to black in a halo of emerald and silver flames engulfing the world.


	3. Chapter 3

THE ELDER SCROLLS

Chapter 3Cheydinhal County, Cyrodiil, 4 Last Seed 3E 433

Carmiene woke to the sounds of the same avian life that had awakened her the morning before. Disoriented, she pressed her palms into the dusty, dry grass in a vain attempt to force her upper body into an upright position. Her skin cracked and bled, her blood staining the greenish-gray vegetation an unholy sanguine. She swore under her breath, scouring the memories of the previous day for explanation.

 _The last thing I remember is being angry and fire,_ she mused, rolling onto her side. Her blurred vision settled on glimmering heaps laying in the grass opposite her.

 _The guards,_ she recalled. Her train of thought was enshrouded in her exhaustion; she struggled for alacrity of mind. _They're passed out. Probably drunk. And we've lost a day._ Frustrated, she funneled her energy into sitting up, though her entire body ached and throbbed in protest. Her gaze became more steady and sure, and she discerned scorch marks on the ground around her, the rocks, shrubs, and trees all blackened and withered. She glanced back at the soldiers again, their breastplates each sporting a large black impact mark from some infernal projectile.

 _Ye gods, what happened here?_

Clinking announced the revival of one of the Watchmen, who groaned and rolled onto his side, gasping and coughing. His hazel eyes opened, at first out of focus, but then settling unconsciously on Carmiene's own. He started, spasmodically scooting backward, dust from the naked ground flying about, filling the air with a nebula of ash.

"Stay away from me!" the man cried, his face twisted into a mask of pure terror.

"What happened? I don't remember anything," Carmiene croaked, her throat dry from the sudden inundation of particulates into the air.

" _Stay away from me!_ " the frightened Watchman repeated, this time at a screech. "You must be _possessed_ with some _Daedra_ or something! Stay away!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"The flames, swirling around your body… the heat, oh, the heat… Caulus is dead…" he sobbed, rocking back and forth, his wails in a steady crescendo of misery.

 _Did I_ kill _him? Did_ I _kill him? All I can remember is the fire, the glowing, the rage I felt,_ Carmiene thought, fear gripping her own heart now. _Could I possibly kill a man and not know I had done it?_ Guilt and sorrow flooded her consciousness. Tears began dripping first down her angular nose, onto her trembling lips, and then finally from her chin to the ground. She felt sure that if her remaining travelling companion were not terrified and hysterical he would have plunged his blade into her flesh without a second thought.

"What now?" she asked her escort, her voice distant and trembling.

"We wait for the detachment of Watchmen who will be dispatched to this area when we don't make it to the waystation on time. I'm not going anywhere with you!" he wiped at the tears flowing into the sores on his cracked skin. He grimaced, then groaned as his expression re-opened the scabs on his face and salty tears dripping into them and mixing with the pus and plasma sitting in the untreated burns.

Carmiene closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and focused on her escort's damaged skin. She focused her magicka into trying to knit his flesh back together. She glanced over at the weeping soldier, who was progressively looking healthier. She never was very good at Restoration, but a relieved sigh told her she was at least moderately successful.

Carmiene climbed into the back of the carriage once more, staring blankly at her own unmarked skin and back at the scarred ground and the once-blistered face of her terrified companion. She bowed her head, the tears falling once more, for the man she killed, for this stranger she attacked and injured, and for herself and the confusion she constantly felt.


End file.
